Is Your Network IoT Ready?

Networks are currently optimised for voice and internet services. But with IoT on the horizon, networking and testing demands will change dramatically. Here’s how IoT will impact your network testing – and how to adapt to the change.

Network operators and equipment manufacturers know all about testing mobile networks to ensure optimum voice and internet service quality.

But the Internet of Things is set to place very different demands on the world’s networks – requiring a very different testing approach to ensure continued service quality and user satisfaction.

The sheer variety of IoT devices will further complicate network testing and assurance, as operators strive to support both mission-critical and high-volume, low-cost IoT applications.

Networks designed for services used by humans will also need to evolve to manage machine-to-machine communications, while network operators making the shift to virtualised network components will need to be aware of how IoT traffic will affect virtual gateways.

Same problems, new scale

As well as bringing completely new challenges, IoT will force operators to look at existing network issues in a new light.

For instance, when millions of potentially unsecure IoT devices start joining a network, robust security suddenly becomes even more critical, and cybercriminals gain an array of new partners to co-opt into denial of service attacks.

New testing for a new network age

All of this means network operators need to rethink the way they test.

Many existing network testing solutions simply won’t be able to accurately simulate the varied and unproven traffic and behavioural mixes IoT devices will generate, while the remote locations of many critical IoT devices will make on-site field testing prohibitively costly.

What’s more, IoT currently lacks a single standard – increasing the testing burden, as network operators must engage with and design tests for a range of cellular IoT standards.

Your IoT testing guide

The bottom line is that network testing needs to adapt and evolve to ensure continued service quality for IoT devices – and existing voice and internet services.

We’ve written a white paper to help network operators and equipment manufacturers understand what changes IoT will bring – and how to test your network to ensure it’s ready.